It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want To

One wintry Tuesday twenty-eight years ago, I came into this world, kicking and screaming and determined to do things My Way. (Unfortunately for my mother, I was facing the wrong direction. Eventually they straightened me out, though not without considerable effort.)

Turns out not much has changed since then.

The original title for this post was going to be "Anti-Climactic," as my birthday this year, as in many years, was subsumed by holiday festivities. There is no birthday party planned, there was no birthday lunch with co-workers, there will be no birthday happy hour. Today was the annual company holiday party, so there was plenty of merry-making, though not directed at me. This is just part of the territory, when it comes to having a December birthday.

Also, most of my friends are older than me and everyone who's "my age" (really, my grade in school) have long since turned 28, some of them having moved on to 29 or even 30 already, and somewhere around September of each year I start thinking of myself as whatever the upcoming birthday number is, so by the time the day actually rolls around, I've already mentally adjusted to being that age. (In fact, I have more than once recently characterized myself as "pushing thirty," irrespective of the fact that 30 was more than two years away.) This was all fine, as I didn't need to make a big deal out of this particular birthday, so, whatever.

At this point, I would pay good money to lock in "Anti-Climactic" for the rest of my life, because what I got instead was, "Happy Fucking Birthday, please have an identity crisis while you watch your career plans unravel into a giant pile of yarn at your feet, compliments of the Universe, two bosses and one god-damned ex-boyfriend."

I didn't even get cake with it.

So, today was an awful lot like that original Tuesday, December 12, with kicking and screaming and perhaps a bit of staunch determination on my part that would benefit from a little turning around, but I'm not ready to admit defeat yet. Tomorrow is another day and it can only be better than today, right? It'll be hard to top my champagne dinner, (and unlike a "champagne brunch" where you have champagne with brunch, a "champagne dinner" is one where you're consuming only champagne, at dinner-time) but at least I know there are some lovely chocolates waiting for me in California.